If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

I’m for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

We’ve climbed the mighty mountain. I see the valley below, and it’s a valley of peace.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

We have no right to express an opinion until we know all of the answers.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.

If you don’t feel safe as a child, you can’t learn.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact, we think it is infinite.

My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we’ve had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries – the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

Adventure is worthwhile in itself.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‚Eureka!‘ but ‚That’s funny…‘

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

I believe you’ve got to do your due diligence.

Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.

Today, we’re still loaded down – and, to some extent, embarrassed – by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

I’m not really book-smart.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

Sometimes the greatest meals on vacations are the ones you find when Plan A falls through.